by Steve Mosby
On the day she died – as she continued to put it – Charlie told us she had left the house as normal, but called in sick to work from the car. Neither her husband, Paul Carlisle, nor her employers had known where she was really going that day. At that point, she was eight weeks pregnant, but she hadn’t told anyone else, and she had no intention of doing so. She wasn’t planning on carrying the baby to term. But she also knew that Paul would be delighted by the news, and that he would try to persuade her to keep the child.
‘He always wanted children,’ she said.
‘And you didn’t?’
‘God, no.’ She relented slightly. ‘It’s different when they arrive, of course. But Ella wasn’t here back then. She wasn’t real. And the whole thing was an accident. I’d never wanted a child. Paul wouldn’t have understood. It had always been one of those things between us. He respected my decision, while it was just theoretical. But I think my having an abortion would have been too much for him.’
‘So you kept it secret?’
She bristled at that.
‘No. Secret implies that someone else had a right to know. That I was keeping it from them. But that’s not how it was. It was nobody else’s business.’
‘All right,’ Mercer said. ‘So you were planning to have an abortion?’
‘I had an appointment. I went. But in the end ... ’
‘You couldn’t go through with it.’
‘No.’ She looked down at her hands, her hair obscuring her scars. ‘I don’t know why. I remember being annoyed with myself at the time, because it was as though I was being the sort of weak woman I hate. I thought I’d be strong and matter-of-fact when it came to it, but ... I wasn’t. I couldn’t do it.’
‘You decided to keep the baby?’
‘No, I just decided not to do it there and then – I wanted some more time to think. But I didn’t know what to do afterwards. It was too early to go home, and I didn’t want to turn up at work.’
So she had driven to the north-east of the city, spent some time in a café – she couldn’t remember the name – and walked aimlessly around. The afternoon turned to evening and, lost in thought, she found herself late, so set off home in a hurry, or tried to at least. But it was raining, and it was already getting dark, and she was distracted ...
‘And I crashed.’
‘You know that’s not true,’ I said.
She didn’t reply. It didn’t matter, though. At some point, she’d been intercepted and abducted, and the crash scene had been staged with Rebecca Lawrence. The important thing right now was that I thought she was telling the truth about the pregnancy. The story fitted with the details in the file about her missing day – and also, I remembered, with what she’d told me during the first interview, when she’d been speaking about the scars.
It was like childbirth. It hurts, but very quickly afterwards you forget how much.
‘And your daughter? Ella?’
‘Was born seven months later, yes.’
‘In the other place?’
‘Yes.’ She looked down at the tablet. ‘That’s how I knew the man was a doctor. He was there when Ella was born. He helped to deliver her.’
Both Mercer and I were silent for a few moments. I had no idea what was going through his head. I was thinking that it at least made sense of Charlie’s refusal to cooperate with us. Not Stockholm syndrome – or at least not wholly that. She was determined to do what she had been told for another reason entirely.
‘Ella is still there?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘In Hell?’
‘No, no.’ Charlie shook her head emphatically. ‘Of course not. God would never allow that. She was born without sin, so there was no need for her to go through Hell. She went straight to Heaven.’
I hesitated. I wanted to shake my head too.
‘Heaven?’
‘Yes.’ A look of upset appeared on her face, and for once the emotion held. ‘But they let me see her quite often. They would take me to the edges of Heaven and let me spend time with her, hold her, play with her. And when I go back, that’s where I’ll be too. It’s what I’ll have finally earned.’
‘Charlie,’ I said. ‘Slow down. Tell me about Heaven.’
Her face brightened at that.
‘It’s lovely.’
She described ‘Heaven’ as best she could, and it provided a stark contrast with the vision of ‘Hell’ she’d given. There was a kind of park, she said – a field, with a wood and an orchard. It was silent and peaceful, and even when it rained there was a sense of tranquility and calm. At the centre, there was a large white building, like a cliff face made of chalk. On a few occasions, when visiting her daughter, Charlie had been allowed inside. The rooms were all white, the furnishings new and clean, and the bed sheets soft. Ella had wanted for nothing.
‘Who looked after her?’ I said.
Again that look of surprise.
‘God,’ she said. ‘Of course.’
And for a moment, I couldn’t think of anything to say.
If what she was telling us was true, she was describing something far more extensive than we’d been previously considering. Not just a hell for punishment, but a heaven too. And not necessarily just a single madman, even with accomplices to help him, but more than one. A group – a cult, perhaps – with the patience and resources to act over a period of several years.
Beside me, Mercer spoke gently.
‘And that’s where you’re going back to, now that you’ve told me all this?’
‘Yes.’
‘But Charlie,’ he said, ‘how will they even know?’
‘They’re all-powerful.’
I started to answer that no, of course they weren’t – but then they hardly needed to be. You had to go through the main entrance by the car park to reach the Baines Wing. These individuals were well organised. It would hardly be beyond them to have someone watching.
Someone who might still be there now.
I stood up. ‘John. We have to go.’
‘Wait,’ Charlie said. ‘I haven’t told you yet.’
‘Haven’t told us what?’
‘What I’m supposed to. Ella is part of it, but not everything. I haven’t told you about the sins I’m wearing.’
I stared at the scars on her face and realised that no, of course she hadn’t. Because how could being pregnant count as a sin? And what was it supposed to mean to Mercer in particular anyway?
‘Go on, then,’ I said. ‘Tell us.’
She took a deep breath, gathering herself.
‘My sins,’ she said slowly, ‘are numerous, but the one I am wearing now is very specific.’ Her hand went to her stomach. ‘My sin is that I didn’t abort my unborn daughter. That I decided to keep her for a second longer than I had to.’
I was losing what little patience I had left.
‘Why would that be a sin, Charlie? You said Ella was born without sin. That she was being taken care of in this ... Heaven.’
‘Yes. That is true. But it was my sin to keep her back then, because deep down, I knew. Before I died, I could pretend I didn’t; I could hide the truth from myself. But I’ve admitted it now. I have worn it. There’s no need to deny it any longer.’
‘Deny what?’
‘That a part of me knew exactly what a monster my husband really was.’
She rubbed her stomach gently, and when she looked up at us, her face was desperately sad.
‘That a part of me knew full well what he would do to a child of his own.’
Groves
The last image of him
It didn’t look as though the dead woman had been there for very long. She had been laid out like a star, her hands and feet tethered to the four bedposts with wire. Her hands, hanging down from their bindings, somehow reminded Groves of dead birds. Her head was tilted away from him, staring lifelessly towards the open window, where the dim light coming in revealed the extent of the injury to her throat. It looked as though she
’d been nearly decapitated by the ferocity of the attack. Blood had crept down the white silk blouse she was wearing.
Groves took a careful step closer to the bed, edging around the base and towards the far side. He wanted to see the woman’s face, but at least some of the policeman within him remained. He did his best to move slowly and quietly, just as he often did at crime scenes, almost as though the victim was sleeping and mustn’t be disturbed.
The woman’s face was familiar, but for a moment he couldn’t place where he might have seen her before. Closer to, the other wounds she’d suffered were more obvious: cuts to her arms and body, done straight through the clothes, and several further slices on her face. Someone had drawn on the skin with a knife. A spray of blood from the larger wound had dried on the wall beside her, and a pool on the floor beneath the bed had already congealed.
The same killer.
Clearly it was: the same man who had killed Leland and Thompson. Which implied that this woman, whoever she was, had also been linked to Simon Chadwick and the rest of them. It was possible she had been involved in Jamie’s murder. That knowledge should have tempered his reaction to seeing her dead like this. It ought to have made it easier to look at the body, knowing that in some sense she had deserved it. It didn’t.
Groves wasn’t sure what he was feeling, but there was certainly no pleasure in knowing that this woman had suffered and died. If he felt anything at all right then, it was a profound sense of sadness. Whatever else it might have achieved, what had happened to these people wouldn’t bring Jamie back. In spite of the guilt he’d felt earlier, this didn’t look anything like justice to him. Suffering and evil could never be cancelled out by more of it.
He crouched down, careful not to touch the bed itself, and peered at the woman’s face. Even with what had been done to it, it was easy enough to imagine what she would have looked like in life ...
He stood up suddenly, taking a panicked step back.
Shit. Shit.
He didn’t know the woman’s name, but he knew where he recognised her from. Back when Jamie had been alive, she had worked at the nursery he’d attended. Laura something. That was her first name. He’d probably never heard her surname.
Groves nodded to himself.
He could almost have laughed.
Stitching me up good and proper, aren’t you?
What to do next? There didn’t seem any point phoning this scene in. It was the right thing to do, but it would surely damn him. However much Sean might want to believe him, the evidence against him was mounting. He needed to figure out the best way to handle it. He needed a hand of cards to play.
He turned to leave the room. And then froze for the second time.
Do you want to see your son again?
When he’d walked in, he hadn’t seen them.
Photographs. Stuck to the wall beside the doorway. There were about twenty of them, and they looked home-made, as though printed out on photographic paper. Each one showed almost the exact same scene: the room behind Groves; a child standing at the foot of the bed.
He took a step closer.
The light in each photograph was subtly different. Some appeared to have been taken in the daytime, while others were illuminated by candle- or torchlight. The girls and boys were of various ages.
This is where they brought them.
This was where they had brought Jamie. Groves crouched down, panicking now, peering at the photographs. Laila Buckingham was there. Oh God. One by one, he looked, not believing that Jamie could really be here amongst these children, his gaze flicking from photo to photo, and then he stopped looking, because there he was. Everything in the world disappeared. Apart from the photograph, everything went away entirely.
It was strange how calm he felt.
Jamie.
In the photograph, his son was standing by the bed dressed in the blue jeans and orange shark T-shirt Groves could remember so well, the clothes he’d vanished in. His blond hair, never cut, was brushed into a neat parting, and the ends curled up above his small shoulders, as though afraid to touch them. Groves had a sudden, visceral memory of how it had felt to touch his hair. How thin and soft it had been.
Jamie wasn’t crying in the photo, but his expression wasn’t blank either. Instead, he was looking at the camera with something approaching curiosity. His expression seemed to be saying: This is strange; what is happening here? There was certainly no indication that he was scared or hurt – but then he was never easily cowed, never afraid of anything. Every new experience had been treated as an adventure, as though he believed the world couldn’t hurt him, because it never had. Until it did.
His cheeks were slightly red. Groves could see the rash just below his eye, and remembered rubbing cream into it the morning before he went missing, while Jamie tried to squirm out of Caroline’s embrace. He was exactly as Groves recalled him. A little boy, frozen forever in time.
This is the last image of him.
Groves reached out to touch the photograph, not caring now about fingerprints, not caring about anything. There might be other pictures, of course – later ones that would be unbearable to see – but this was a more recent image than any in Caroline’s album, or in their memories.
He took the photograph from the wall. It was tacked on, and came away with a slight snap. He stared down at it again, then stroked his son’s face, surprised for a brief second that the paper was cold; he had almost been expecting the warmth that came from touching skin.
He put it in his coat pocket.
Time to leave. He went back downstairs, moving less carefully than before; there didn’t seem much point in trying now. He would be tied to the scene eventually, whatever he did, and it felt like the photograph had changed everything. He was going to call this in and deal with the consequences. He didn’t care any more.
He walked outside, where the rain had picked up, already taking out his mobile, but he didn’t have the chance to make the call. He faltered. God will be with you, he remembered, looking around the car park. Looking at the people walking quietly towards him.
Mark
The photographs
As I pulled up at the end of the cul-de-sac, directly outside Paul Carlisle’s house, I saw that his front door was slightly ajar. I remembered coming to visit him days ago – pulling up behind the large van that had been parked nearby. The street itself was empty now, dead. I stared at the house for a moment, watching the clouds reflected in the implacable glass of the windows, the windscreen of the car slowly smearing with rain.
‘Right,’ I told Mercer. ‘I’ll need you to wait here, John.’
‘I understand.’
I pulled out my mobile as I approached the house, dialling Pete’s number. Even though the rain was falling harder now, the weather still hadn’t broken the heat, and the air was clammy and moist as I made my way up Paul Carlisle’s path to the open front door. The house felt ominous, as though someone inside might be standing slightly back from one of the windows, watching me.
I stopped on the doorstep, the phone to my ear. The door was open far enough to give me a view of the kitchen beyond, empty and full of shadow.
‘Detective Pete Dwyer.’
‘It’s Mark.’
I gave him a rundown of the situation: that I’d persuaded Mercer to come to the hospital with me, and what Charlie had told us there. I could hear he was annoyed at me involving Mercer again without his permission, but by the end of the account, he seemed to have decided to let it ride for the moment.
‘Carlisle’s front door’s open,’ I said. ‘It might be nothing, but I’m going in to check it out. His girlfriend lives here too, and she’s pregnant.’
‘Right.’ Pete sounded firm. ‘I’m sending a car, and I’ll be over straight away. Don’t take any stupid risks, Mark.’
‘Don’t worry.’
I hung up.
‘Mr Carlisle?’ I called out, rapping hard on the door. It opened a little wider. ‘It’s the police, Mr
Carlisle. Are you inside? Can you hear me?’
There was no reply, so I pushed the door fully open and stepped into the kitchen. It was even messier than the last time I’d been here, but there was also an atmosphere to the place now that I didn’t like. The gloom seemed darker than it should have done.
‘Mr Carlisle?’
I moved through to the front room, and immediately stopped in the doorway. The room was empty, but there were obvious signs of a struggle: the coffee table had been knocked out of place, and was now pushed at an angle against the settee, while the television had fallen off the wall. The clothes and newspapers that had been piled on the seats during my last visit were scattered at random across the floor.
Charlie, I thought, what have you done?
What have your new-found friends done here?
‘Mr Carlisle?’
Again no answer. I stepped into the living room, my heart beating too quickly. Something in the house was making my skin crawl. I wanted nothing more than to back slowly out of the room and return to the car to wait, but I had to make sure that either Carlisle or his partner weren’t lying injured somewhere. I made my way carefully across the room to the door at the far corner. Pulling my sleeve down over my hand, I turned the handle, stepping back as I opened it in case anyone was waiting on the other side. Nobody was.
The carpet on the staircase was old and battered, worn through in places, and the landing at the top was illuminated by a single bulb, the lightest place in the house so far.
‘Mr Carlisle?’
I was no longer expecting a response, but this time I did hear something – not a reply, but a sound coming from somewhere upstairs. Somebody crying. A woman, whimpering softly to herself.
I took the stairs three at a time.
‘It’s the police,’ I shouted. ‘Where are you, please?’
The woman was still crying, and the sound drew me towards the half-closed door of what was obviously the main bedroom. I pushed it open slowly, and saw her straight away: Carlisle’s girlfriend, sitting on the floor between a wardrobe and a dressing table, her back against the wall, her arms hugging her swollen stomach. I realised that I didn’t even know her name.